Cinema
Sotigui Kouyaté: A Modern Griot
Sotigui Kouyaté, un griot moderne
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun · 1996
Synopsis
At sixty, the actor Sotigui Kouyaté returns for the first time in thirty years to Bamako, his native city. In front of the camera, he talks about his childhood, speaks of Africa and of the role of griot, which is handed down from father to son. The film traces his career, from his first appearances on the stages of Burkina Faso to his work with Peter Brook in Paris; Brook, Jean-Claude Carrière and Jean-Pierre Guingané give their testimony. It shows him as actor, musician, songwriter and healer, attached to his roots although he lives in France.
Context
This fifty-eight-minute portrait, in 35 mm and in colour, came after short films and a musical documentary by the same director; Roy Armes considers it the most substantial of his early works. Kouyaté, born in 1936 in Bamako into a renowned family of griots, had been chosen by Peter Brook to play the sage Bhisma in the Mahabharata; Brook says in the film that a single shot, of a man as tall and slender as a tree, had decided him. The documentary was later shown in tributes to the actor, in Portland in 2011 and in Istanbul in 2012.
Who it is for
A documentary portrait of nearly an hour, in French, for those who know the actor or are interested in the role of the griot.
Prizes and reception
He received the prize of the Agence de la coopération culturelle et technique at the Amiens festival in 1996.
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